A major issue in clinical trials is recruitment of subjects. Considerable time and skill must be devoted to recruitment of older subjects, minorities and disabled people with chronic diseases. The recruitment core will have overall responsibility for promoting community relations, recruiting participants for developmental studies, pilot studies and main clinical trials and conducting research on questions related to recruitment effectiveness. This core builds on substantial experience and projects previously and currently underway at the Bowman Gray School of Medicine and at the University of Tennessee Memphis. Both institutions have sophisticated clinical trial recruitment experience, and it will be possible to combine them in a single collaborative core which will share resources and ideas and develop new knowledge methods regarding recruitment of older subjects in clinical trials. The activities of the recruitment core will have three foci: community relations, the development of recruitment strategies and recruitment data bases in the conduct of research on the ways to improve recruitment and retention of older subjects.